5 weeks, 61 miles and a return to backing myself in group settings

One of the things I crave at the end of most days after work is being able to head out for an hour to 90 minutes, not having to talk to anyone and only having a usually mildly humourous podcast for company.

I am quite a confident person most of the time, but this has a habit of shrinking occasionally in large groups. I had volunteered to take part in something at work this week with around 40 others, this was going to bring me back out of my comfort zone, even with only 17 involved in the first session.

I can sit in a group and not contribute with the best of them, luckily the first time I opened my mouth apart from the introductions was something I had thought about several times on my running earlier in the week so could describe it quite coherently. There is an element of the head clearing which running offers that is largely based on going through things for yourself.

I had set off on my usual lap of 7.5 miles before 5am on Tuesday and Thursday morning. I also did another lap on Thursday and Friday night.

My weekend running consisted of 2 more laps of 7.5 miles yesterday morning and 3 laps of 5.4 miles (one yesterday evening and 2 this morning). Apart from being uncomfortably full yesterday evening, none of these were overly eventful.

I’m looking forward to one more big mileage week next week before my taper. Having 3 weeks in 4 covering an average over 100 miles per week will be a good evidence base for taking some level of confidence into the race.